


The Least Of These

by Nope



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-14
Updated: 2005-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:07:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25786366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Who wants to live forever?





	The Least Of These

_To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead._   
**\--Bertrand Russell**

1.

It's not hate but casual indifference with which he is raised; just another warm body amidst slim beds and cool corridors in the nun run orphanage. His life fits perfectly into a single cupboard: three shirts, two pairs of trousers, one pair of shoes, socks, pants, and a tie. He is told when to get up and when to sleep, when to walk-not-run, when to stand, when to kneel, when to say his prayers. He is told that God loves him, as God loves all his creations, equally, none more or less so than the others. God's love is free.

2.

His diction is precise, his consonants crisp, his vowels properly rounded. His wand flicks through their echoes with an uncommon control and exact economy of action. He is the model of perfect technical accuracy.

The basilisk curls and uncurls in the deeper darkness behind, scale whispering against scale.

Here, Salazer Slytherin once stood, his ancient, illustrious ancestor. Here, there is no Muggle taint. Here, there is only purpose, pure and undying.

'I put away childish things', Tom thinks, and Voldemort says, "Evacuavi quae erant parvuli."

In the twisting green light the diary rises, pages caught in their own personal breeze.

3.

Honour thy father and mother they tell him. He says he has none, that's why he's there. They tell him that everyone has a Father in God. God's love is with him, always. He is one of God's own and that means he was born tainted with Eve's sin, but it's okay because God so loves the world he sent his son here to die, and the blood of Christ will wash that sin from his soul. Tom shudders. Stained glass smashes. Later, they cut down the yew tree, though no one can explain how the branches reached that far.

4.

There's a spider, spinning a web under the clock. Midnight again in the records room. The archivist says "lock up when you're done."

He nods. "Soon."

She says, "You must really love your work," and smiles.

He almost tells her he's looking for his father, but in the end all he says is "it's important to me" and she nods and wishes him a good night.

Wizards have their families neatly stitched into sprawling tapestries. He pages through old and crinkled papers, tracing faded names.

When he gets bored, he kills the spider. A flash of green. An empty web.

5.

The old iron bell clangs. He rises from his corner and joins the other children lining up on the playground. Sister Mary-Margaret pulls him from the queue, tells him to follow her. He nods silently. Children are seen, not heard. They walk down the cold corridor, footsteps echoing. At the office door, she looks him over, sniffs loudly, and turns the handle, opening the door and ushering him in. Mother Superior isn't there. A tall man in a long blue robe peers down at him over half-moon glasses, eyes twinkling. After a moment, the man smiles. Tom carefully smiles back.

6.

Black mamba in the dust.

He's twenty-eight in Africa, hunting futures, haunting tribes. Black snake dances. Medicine man works the cure. No death for this blood eyed boy.

Shaman's fingers, rough on his skull. He swallows again. Swallows his tongue. Eyes roll up. Black snake. Wet fangs.

Everything splinters.

Scattered across his own life. A whip crack of nuns. White sheets in the rain. Bubbles and blood in the prefects' bathroom. Deathless, bodiless, thick blood in his throat.

'This,' he thinks, 'will be my new Canaan; these, my people'.

He holds out his hand. Black snake spits. Voldemort swallows death.

7.

He returns at summer's start, filled to bursting with tales of wild beauty and sunny joy, of position and power, of friends and of houses, magic, and snakes that curl and whisper forked secrets. There is only silence. His wand packed away with his books and his robes in his trunk. In his cupbroad are three shirts, two pairs of trousers, one pair of shoes, socks, pants, and a tie. He is told when to stand, when to kneel, when to say his prayers. He is told, these three remain: faith, hope, charity. And the greatest of these is charity.

8.

Crucio.

Intoxicating. That rush. Those whimpered screams. Hold it. just. a little. more.

"Frank and Alice Longbottom," he says. "Lily and James Potter," he says. Three times have they defied him. And he says "Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange" (two by two by two) and they whimper and beg and scream under his wand.

"My disciples," he hisses at them. "My bretheren. My children. Why haven't I killed you already?"

"Please," says Bellatrix. "My lord."

"No," he says.

"My lord." A trembling voice says, "Good news."

He doesn't listen until the word 'prophecy'. Good news indeed. Still, he was interrupted.

Crucio.

9.

God is stone, graven and grave and coldly silent. Painted Mary smiles beatifically but her arms are full and her eyes, fixed skywards, never lower to meet his. Tom is small enough to lie curled up on a pew. All he can see is wood, varnish worn thin by countless orphans, and the crosses embossed on the covers of hymn books carelessly dropped upside down on the shelf. His eyes are hot and prickling, but he pushes the heels of his palms against them until the feeling goes away, silently reciting all the names of his ancestors, one by one.

10.

It's so easy, it's meaningless.

James is straight-backed and proudly defiant and snapped backwards by the curse, cracking plaster, falling in blood soaked dust, wide eyed and dead.

'I am alive,' he thinks.

Lily screams and little Harry screams and he talks just to see the hate colour her cheeks and brighten her eyes, so perfectly green in the flash of green light, and he thinks, 'They are dead. What greater power is there than that?'

Harry is crying, face screwed up, tears running down red cheeks.

'To all things', he thinks, 'an ending.' and raises his wand.

Avada kedavra.


End file.
